Can Sentiment Analysis Platform Predict Outcome of US Election?

Social media systems like Facebook and Twitter contain a wealth of information about how their users feel about current topics of interest -- the trick is to be able to root through vast amounts of data and extract the hidden gems of information.

The word "sentiment" is defined as a view of, or attitude toward, a situation or event; an opinion; or a feeling of emotion. ZimGo, from BPU Holdings (BPU), is a Sentiment Analysis Platform that is designed to evaluate huge amounts of social media data to determine what people feel about particular topics.

ZimGo features a sophisticated pattern recognition engine. In the case of its natural language processing (NLP) capabilities, ZimGo augments regular dictionaries with the use of the Urban Dictionary, thereby allowing it to parse and understand posts using slang. Furthermore, ZimGo also includes emojis and hashtags in its analysis.

Of course, one topic of great interest is the US election, which is in progress at the time of this writing. The creators of ZimGo recently ran a sentiment analysis on the approval ratings for Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton associated with various key topics. The ensuing analysis can be presented in a variety of ways, including day-by-day and hour-by-hour (it's interesting to see how approval ratings varied by topic throughout the course of the presidential debates), but an overall summary is shown below.

Approval ratings for Trump vs. Clinton (Source: BPU Holdings)

Measuring areas like the economy, foreign affairs, healthcare, immigration, income distribution, and Washington culture, the ZimGo analysis revealed the public's close positive/negative feelings toward the candidates. The most recent debate only minimally affected these sentiments, perhaps confirming the level of follower commitment late in the election process. The most notable exception is that the sentiment toward Clinton is significantly more positive with regard to income distribution.

BPU Holdings recently announced plans to offer free licenses for the ZimGo sentiment analysis platform to university development partners in Korea and the US. Initially available in Korean, English and Japanese versions of ZimGo will soon be available in limited beta release. Those interested in joining the beta may enroll at ZimGo.cloud.